This disclosure relates generally to computer systems, and more particularly to firmware dump collection from a primary system dump device adapter.
A critical component of successful customer support is the ability to diagnose a problem with the data gathered during an initial failure. This may be referred to as First Failure Data Capture (FFDC). Requiring a recreation of the problem to gather sufficient data (Second Failure Data Capture, or SFDC) is undesirable, and sometimes is not possible.
A computer system dump includes the contents of the system memory regions that are in use in a computer at a given point in time. The operating system control structures, such as page tables, status flags, control registers, program counter and stack pointer are also captured in the computer system dump. The computer system dump may also include state data for each device driver registered with the operating system. Data collection from the hardware device adapters that are connected to the hardware devices that are installed on the system may also be included in the system dump. The operating state of the adapter firmware, which is program code that is executed on a hardware device adapter, may be required to resolve a system failure. Attempting firmware data collection may disable the hardware device adapter until it is reset by the next computer power recycle. However, a hardware device adapter that is connected to the computer system dump device cannot be rendered unusable, because some or all of the collected system dump data may be lost. Consequently FFDC may be prevented if the firmware dump from the system dump device adapter is required to diagnose a system failure.